Pacific tuna 2026: the FFA price floor, the eastward drift, and the USD 2 billion access economy

The WCPO catch baseline: 2.50 million tonnes, four species, eight gatekeepers #

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission convention area, stretching from the equator to 60 degrees south and from the eastern boundary of Indonesia to roughly 150 degrees west, is the largest single tuna fishery on Earth. The 2024 SPC Oceanic Fisheries Programme stock assessment reports a 2023 catch of 2.50 million tonnes, equivalent to 55 percent of the 4.55 million tonnes of global tuna landed across the four principal market species. The catch is concentrated: roughly 86 percent of skipjack and 70 percent of yellowfin are taken inside the exclusive economic zones of FFA member states, with the bulk inside the eight Parties to the Nauru Agreement plus Tokelau. The PNA group, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu, controls roughly 25 to 30 percent of the global tuna catch through its joint Vessel Day Scheme.

Purse seine fleets are the volume engine. The 2023 active purse seine fleet inside the WCPO numbered 269 vessels, drawn primarily from China, Chinese Taipei, Korea, the Philippines, the United States, Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, and a residual Japanese fleet (FFA Tuna Development Indicators 2024). Longline catch, dominated by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Vanuatu flagged vessels, supplies sashimi grade bigeye and yellowfin and the canning grade albacore that feeds American Samoa and Bangkok plants. The Dec 2024 WCPFC longline target reference point for South Pacific albacore will determine whether Fiji, Cook Islands, Samoa, and French Polynesia domestic longline fleets remain solvent through 2030.

The Vessel Day Scheme floor: a coordinated price for sovereignty #

The PNA Vessel Day Scheme, in force since 2012 and run from the PNA Office (PNAO) in Majuro, sells fishing days rather than catch quota. The total allowable effort is set annually at roughly 45,000 vessel days for purse seine vessels inside the eight PNA EEZs plus Tokelau, distributed between parties on a formula combining historical catch, biomass distribution, and area. The PNA agreed at its May 2022 ministerial meeting to lift the benchmark VDS minimum price to USD 13,000 per day for 2024 and beyond, up from USD 10,000 in 2018 to 2021 and USD 8,000 in earlier years. Realized prices in 2024 ranged from USD 13,000 on bilateral terms to USD 15,000 plus on competitive resale of unused days. PNAO sold roughly 38,500 days in 2023 at a weighted average of USD 13,500, generating approximately USD 520 million in gross access revenue across the eight PNA states.

VDS revenue is now the single largest source of public revenue in Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, and Federated States of Micronesia. Kiribati's 2024 budget recorded fisheries revenue of AUD 224 million, equivalent to USD 148 million, or about 64 percent of total domestic revenue. Tuvalu reported fisheries revenue of AUD 41 million in fiscal 2023, roughly 50 percent of recurrent revenue (Tuvalu MoF Q4 2023). FSM 2023 fisheries revenue ran USD 79 million, approximately 60 percent of domestic revenue. Solomon Islands and PNG draw a smaller share, on the order of 5 to 8 percent, but use access fees as the primary anchor for provincial governments in New Ireland, West New Britain, and Western provinces. Lowy Institute and ANU DevPolicy estimates put the pre 2010 access fee yield at USD 60 million per year across the same group, an eight to nine fold real increase inside fifteen years.

Access fee architecture: USD 600 million plus, four buyer blocs #

The four pillars of the WCPO access economy are the PNA VDS, the US South Pacific Tuna Treaty, the EU Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements, and the bilateral envelopes with China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The US Treaty, in force since 1988 and renewed under the 2016 Economic Assistance Agreement, runs through 2032. The current annual envelope, drawn from the US State Department fact sheet and confirmed in the Department of the Interior Office of Insular Affairs 2024 budget justification, is USD 60 million per year, of which USD 21 million is direct industry payment and USD 39 million is US government economic assistance. The treaty grants up to 28 US flagged purse seiners access to PIC EEZs and a quota of 8,000 albacore longline days, with the Hawaii and American Samoa fleets as the principal beneficiaries.

EU SFPAs with Cook Islands, Kiribati, and Solomon Islands together carry an annual financial contribution of approximately EUR 10.4 million, of which roughly half is sectoral support to observer programs, port state measures, and processing capacity. China's bilateral access has expanded materially: PNG signed a 2018 framework extended in 2022 and 2024 alongside grant aid for the Lae and Wewak wharves; Kiribati's 2019 China access deal sits at roughly USD 11 million per year plus USD 27 million in concessional financing tied to Phoenix Islands Protected Area zoning revisions. FFA disclosure puts Chinese flagged purse seine days inside Solomon EEZ at 2,400 in 2023, generating approximately USD 32 million. Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese longline access, mostly run as charter or joint venture fees, totaled approximately USD 55 million across PIC EEZs in 2023 (FFA Economic and Development Indicators 2024).

The price cycle: skipjack at USD 1,800 per tonne and the canners' reset #

Skipjack prices delivered to the Bangkok cannery cluster, the global price benchmark, fell from USD 2,400 per tonne in late 2022 to USD 1,280 by August 2024, the lowest real level in eight years (Undercurrent News, INFOFISH GLOBEFISH). The collapse reflected three concurrent shocks: a strong 2023 catch driven by a La Nina aligned western pole anomaly that concentrated biomass inside PNG and FSM EEZs, depleted European canned tuna inventories that had been built ahead of feared 2022 supply disruption, and a credit driven inventory destocking by Thai Union, Bumble Bee Seafoods, and Tri Marine. Prices recovered to USD 1,800 per tonne by Q4 2024 as Spanish, Italian, and US retail buyers rebuilt cover ahead of the 2025 contract round and as Bangkok plants reduced raw fish inventories ahead of the Thai Union 2024 capex pause.

The price recovery is fragile. The 2024 SPC stock assessment shows skipjack biomass at 0.50 of unfished biomass, well above the 0.20 limit reference point, but the Dec 2024 WCPFC Scientific Committee flagged a precautionary signal on yellowfin where 2023 catch ran 17 percent above the 2017 to 2019 average. A USD 1,800 to USD 2,000 per tonne band is the structural break even for high cost Korean and Japanese purse seine operators carrying older Class 6 hulls. For Pacific Island processors, principally Bumble Bee owned Solomon Tonga Tuna, RD Tuna in PNG (Frabelle joint venture), and the StarKist owned American Samoa plant, sustained skipjack above USD 1,700 supports throughput economics; below USD 1,500, only the FAD free MSC certified Pacifical brand tonnage clears margin, given that the Pacifical premium has held in the USD 200 to USD 400 per tonne range over canned grade skipjack since 2018.

Climate redistribution: 30 percent of WCPO biomass eastward by 2050 #

The defining medium term risk for the access economy is biophysical, not market. Bell, Senina, Adams, Aumont, Calmettes, Clark, Dessert, Gehlen, Gorgues, Habasque, Hare, Holmes, Lehodey, Lengaigne, Marsac, Menkes, Nicol, Ouled Cheikh, Rastoin, and Williams (Nature Sustainability, 2021), using SEAPODYM tuna population dynamics coupled to CMIP6 ocean projections, find that under a high emissions scenario approximately 13 to 30 percent of WCPO skipjack and yellowfin biomass will redistribute eastward into the high seas pockets and into the eastern Pacific by 2050, with the largest absolute losses for the EEZs of Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Cook Islands, and Federated States of Micronesia. The mechanism is the projected shift of the warm pool and the western Pacific 28 degree Celsius isotherm boundary, which sets the eastern edge of skipjack peak abundance, by 1,500 to 4,000 kilometers east under SSP5 8.5.

The fiscal exposure is asymmetric. Kiribati would see access revenue fall by USD 80 million to USD 100 million per year by 2050 under the central SEAPODYM run, holding VDS prices constant. Tuvalu and FSM face proportionally similar shocks. PNG, Solomons, and Marshall Islands lose less in revenue terms because purse seine effort retains some access to their EEZs, but lose disproportionately in onshore processing employment as Bangkok competitive parity weakens. The Pacific Islands Forum has formalized this risk in its 2023 Maritime Boundaries Declaration, which asserts that PIC EEZ baselines remain valid notwithstanding sea level rise. The fish that swim across them are a different problem. The PNA, FFA, and SPC are negotiating an access fee mechanism that would compensate states for biomass loss, and the 2024 WCPFC Tropical Tuna Measure carries a placeholder for climate triggered effort allocation.

Recommendations: holding the floor, hedging the drift #

For Pacific Island governments, the priority is to defend the VDS floor against fleet consolidation pressure and to put a binding climate clause into the 2025 PNA ministerial decision. A coordinated reserve price of USD 14,000 per day in 2026 and USD 15,000 in 2027 is consistent with current spot transaction prices and would lift PNA access revenue by approximately USD 60 million per year. The second priority is fiscal: Kiribati and Tuvalu should accelerate the buildup of their sovereign wealth instruments, the Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund and the Tuvalu Trust Fund, to cover at least seven years of forecast revenue loss under the SEAPODYM central case, on the model of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global benchmark.

For the canned tuna majors, Thai Union, Bumble Bee, StarKist, and Tri Marine, the strategic question is whether to lock in long term raw fish supply with PNA states under multi year contracts indexed to a transparent Bangkok skipjack benchmark, or to retain spot exposure as a hedge against the eastward drift. The 2025 to 2030 window favors locking in supply: the supply curve is steepening, MSC certified Pacifical volume is rising at 8 to 10 percent per year, and EU and UK retail buyer concentration on FAD free certified product is structural rather than cyclical. For multinational fleet operators, particularly Chinese, Korean, and Spanish purse seiners, the unavoidable adjustment is the writedown of vessels operating at break even above USD 1,800 per tonne and the reflagging of viable hulls under PIC bilateral arrangements. The Japanese fleet model, charter day operation under PIC flag with shore based transshipment, is the template.

For donor governments and multilateral lenders, the action is to fund the climate transition payment architecture through the Pacific Resilience Facility and the Green Climate Fund, and to publish the SEAPODYM driven access revenue loss as the basis for loss and damage attribution. The US Treaty 2032 review is the leverage point: extension should be conditioned on a US contribution to the climate access fund commensurate with the projected biomass redistribution into high seas waters under US flagged effort. The economics of the Pacific tuna access regime are stronger than they have ever been; the climate physics is the binding constraint, and the fiscal architecture for a 30 percent biomass redistribution does not yet exist.

Sources #

• Forum Fisheries Agency, Tuna Fishery Report Card 2024
• FFA Economic and Development Indicators 2024
• Parties to the Nauru Agreement Office, Vessel Day Scheme
• WCPFC 21st Regular Session, Suva, Dec 2024 outcomes
• SPC Oceanic Fisheries Programme stock assessments
• Bell et al., Pathways to sustaining tuna dependent Pacific Island economies during climate change, Nature Sustainability 2021
• US South Pacific Tuna Treaty, US State Department
• European Commission DG MARE, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements
• Marine Stewardship Council, PNA Pacifical certification
• Lowy Institute, Pacific Aid Map and Pacific tuna access analysis
• International Crisis Group, Pacific Islands strategic competition reporting
• FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture, Tuna Atlas and SOFIA 2024
• Kiribati Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, 2024 Budget
• Pacific Islands Forum, 2023 Declaration on the Continuity of Statehood and the Protection of Persons in the Face of Climate Change Related Sea Level Rise